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Abstract

The present thesis is a corpus-based contrastive study of the French future tense and its
corresponding Norwegian future constructions. The investigation is based on a corpus which
consists of French and Norwegian original texts with their translations into the other
language. The aim of this study is to make a contrastive description of the future tense in
French and in Norwegian and to examine whether or not it is possible to establish a pattern in
these translations.
French is a language which employs a morphological future marker (futur simple), but also a
periphrastic construction to express future tense (futur périphrastique). The periphrastic future
consists of an auxiliary verb (aller) found in the present tense with an infinitive complement.
Norwegian, on the other hand, does not have a morphologically marked future tense. Rather,
Norwegian has an array of constructions that encode future time reference, such as [skal +
infinitive], [vil + infinitive], the form [kommer/kjem til å + infinitive], as well as the present
tense. Besides, there are modal verbs such as kan and bør that point towards future events.
These future markers typically have modal uses and in addition modal particles may be used
in connection with these verbs. Consequently, future tense is complicated to analyse because
modality often comes into play.
The present study has for the most part not been able to reveal unambiguous patterns
pertaining to the translation of future constructions. The results of this study thus confirm the
complexity of future constructions in Norwegian. However, a couple of exceptions to this
finding can be seen. Firstly, the translation of French futur simple into Norwegian present
tense and conversely points in direction of regularity and correspondence between the two
languages. Secondly, despite the difficulty of expressing any rules, there appears to be one
condition, which nevertheless unequivocally establishes a pattern, namely the case of
temporal and conditional subordinate clauses. These clauses automatically require the use of
the future tense in French and the present tense in Norwegian.